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2004
2003 2004 2005 Events * Big Media throws its weight around and Republican appointees at the FCC do its bidding. FCC Economists Keith Brown and Peter Alexander conduct study that shows that locoally owned broadcasts present more local news than large corporate broadcasters. The FCC then "spikes" their report of the study findings until it comes to light in January 2007. Source: John Dunbar. "Spiked Study Leads to New FCC Query." Associated Press. January 25, 2007. * Costa Rican former presidents, Rafael Angel Calderon and Miguel Angel Rodriguez, were accused of taking bribes from, respectively, a Finnish medical company and French engineering firm Alcatel. * U.S. Treasury Department names Shaykh Abd-al-Majid al-Zindani a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under the authority of Executive Order 13224 and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. * Arson attacks by rightwing extremists on abortion providers occur in Florida January and July). * U.S. DoD grants 18$ million to Nonosys, Nanosolar and Konarka to develop military applications of solar energy. * Richard Heinberg publishes Power Down. Timeline January * January 3: NASA's Spirit spacecraft lands on Mars. Opportunity lands there 3 weeks later. * January 10: Spaulding Gray dies a suicide. * January 13: Heroic International Solidarity Movement activist Tom Hurndall dies. He had been shot in the head by the Israeli Army while he attempts to shield Palestinian children on April 11, 2003. * January 14: Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro visits Yasukuni Shrine. * January 15: Carol Moseley Braun abandons race for the Democratic presidential nomination, endorses Howard Dean. * January 19: In an upset over rival Howard Dean, John Kerry wins the Iowa caucuses, becoming the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination for president. * January: India and Pakistan issue the "Islamabad Declaration" at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Islamabad calling for the peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues, inlcuding Jammu and Kashmir. February * February 3: The British government establsihes the Commission to Review Intelligence on Weapons of mass Destruction (Butler Inquiry). * February 3: CIA admits that weapons of mass destruction posed no 'imminent' threat before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. * February 12: Darwin Day * February 12: City officials in San Fransisco begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. * February 12: French Parliament votes 494 to 36 to ban wearing Muslim headscarves and Christian crosses in public schools in an expression of its committment to civic republicanism. * February 19: British Foreign Office announces that five of the nine British men being held in Guantanamo Bay wil be released: Ruhal Ahmed, Tarek Dergoul, Jamal Udeen (also known as Jamal Al Harith), Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul. * February 21: More than 200 unarmed people are massacred by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) at Barlonya camp in Uganda. * February 27: UN Security Council unanimously adopts resolution 1528 establishing UN Operation in Cote d'Ivoire as April 4, 2004. * February 28: Rev. Pat Robertson asserts that, "God’s pattern is for men to be the leaders, both in the church and in the family... Women should listen and learn quietly and submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority over them." March * March 2: U.S. Pres. George W. Bush purges biochemist Elizabeth Blackburn and bioethicist William May from the President's Panel on Bioethics and replaces them with three conservative true-believers: director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Director of Pediatric Surgery Benjamin Carson, Loyola College political scientist Diana Schaub and Berry College political scientist Peter Lawber. Their appointments are widely believed to compromise the integrity of the panel's work. * March 7: Greece conducts parliamentary elections. * March 7: New York City medical examiner's office repors that Spalding Gray's body had been recovered from the East River. * March 10: Britons Tarek Dergoul, Shafiq Rasul, Ruhal Ahmed, and Asif Iqbal are released without charge from British custody after being released from Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. * March 11: 190 people are killed as terrorists bomb the Atocha railway station in Madrid. * March 21: El Salvador conducts presidential election. * March 22: Wheelchair bound Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yasin killed in Israeli air strike in Gaza City at 5:30 am. * March 28: National Union deputy Carlos Hipolito Miralda Roca is assassinated in his home outside Guatemala City. * March 29: Slovenia and the former Warsaw Pact countries of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia officially joined NATO. * March 31: Air America Radio begins its first broadcast day with The O'Franken Factor. April * April 2: Sri Lanka conducts general elections. * April 17: Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi is killed in Israeli missile attack in Gaza. * April 19: Kenyan national Florence Cheriuyot killed by Islamist terrorists in Somalia. * April 28: CBS airs the first photos depicting torture by American soldiers in Iraq at the Abu Ghraib prison. May * May 1: Ten countries: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta and Cyprus join the European Union. * May 17: First day same-sex couples in Massachusetts marry. * May 17: Ezzedine Salim, head of the Iraqi Governing Council is killed in acar bombing close to the Green Zone in Baghdad. June * Lord [[Conrad Black'' sells The Daily Telegraph for $1.6 billion. * June 1: Iraqi Governign Council is sworn in; Ghazi Yawer is appointed President and Ayah Allawi is appointed Prime Minister. * June 3: CIA Director George Tenet resigns for the inevitable "personal reasons." * Jun 22-26: Third Round of Six-Party Talks on North Korean nuclear weapons. Agreement to a Forth Round of talks that never happen. * June 26: presidential election in Iceland. * June 28: Iraq given a new puppet government with change of puppets called "sovereignty". Adminstration policy on War on Terror weakened by The Enemy Combatant Cases. July * July 9: Pentagon responds to freedom of information request from the Associated Press for miltiary payroll records for George W. Bush that they had been "Inadvertently destroyed." How convenient. The records would have hlped clarify the whereabouts of George W. Bush while he was in the Texas Air National Guard. * July 9: Russian editor of Forbes, Paul Klebnikov, is shot to death in Moscow. * July 14: Butler Inquiry presents its report. * July 14: Iraqi Ninevah provincial governor Osam Youssef Kashmoula is assassinated. * July 19: Mr. Liberal announced to the blogosphere that Congressman Greenwood was retiring. Immediately, the netroots sprang to action, creating a surge of support so overwhelming that Ginny Schrader became one of the top targeted races in the nation. Since then, a push has began to create "Blogosphere Day" on July 19th. * July 21: Democratic Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey states that Halliburton Products and Services is a sham entitty that existed only to circumvent sanctions against Iran. * July 22: 9/11 Commission presents its results. The barest of mention is made about "Blowback," the way that the U.S. foreign policy of the Reagan administration encouraged the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. August * August 13: 150 Congolese refugees are massacred in Gatumba. * August 20: Slobodan Milosevic calls the accusations against him "unscrupulous lies" in his openiong statement at his war crimes trial. * August 21: In an assassination attempt on Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina, 21 people die in a grenade and gun attack on a public political rally in Dhaka, Bangldesh. * August 27: CBS News breaks story of an FBI investigation into activities of Israeli spy Lawrence Franklin in the Defense Department, a policy analyst under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Franklin had been an attaché at the US embassy in Israel and was one of two mid-level Pentagon officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense responsible for Iran policy. * August 29: Submission is broadcast in the Netherlands. September * September 3: Hostage taking by Chechen terrorists results in 330 deaths and 500 woundings in Beslan, Russia. * September 7: Legislative and Referendum election in the Cook Islands. * September 8: Military tribunal rules for the first time that a Guantanamo prisoner should be freed from custody. U.S. maintains secrecy about the case. October * October 6: Charles Duelfer, head of the U.S. Iraq Survey Group, presents the final report admitting that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S. invasion. Republicans were already deploying other pretexts for a war actually fought for control of oil and the security of Israel. * October 12: NRA President Wayne LaPierre debates International Action Network on Small Armms director Rebecca Peters at Kings College in London. * October 25: U.S. District Court Judge James I. Cohn dismisses case brought by Florida Democratic Representative Robert Wexler and others against Florida Sec. of State Glenda Hood and Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to stop the use of touchscreen votign systems, introduced in 15 of 67 Florida counties and to be used by half of the state's voters in future elections. November * November 2: George W. Bush prevails over John F. Kerry and running mate John Edwards on election day while eleven states also vote to change their state Constitutions to ban marriage for same-sex couples. * November 2: Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh is stabbed to death by Islamist Mohammed Bouyeri in a political assassination. * November 2: Presidential and Legislative elections in Palau. * November 3: Faith Based Initiative in Taiwan. A 46 year old man jumps into the lion's cage at the Taipei Zoo shouting "Jesus will save you!" in an effort to save the King of the Beasts. One of the lions bit him on the leg but he was otherwise unhurt because the critters had been fed earlier in the day. * November 6, 2004: Defeated Pennsylvania Libertarian Congressional candidate (note the oxymoron) Arthur L. Farnsworth, is arrested is evading $87,000 in Federal income taxes. * November 10: Old School Work Place Discipline. A Red Bank, Tennessee business (Tasty Freeze Sno Biz) owner Paul Eugene Levengood is arrested on two counts of sexual battery after spanking tweo female employees for incompetence. Levengood spanked one employee on the fourth day at work because she forgot to put a banana in a smoothie. * November 23: The Orange Revolution in the Ukraine begins. Citing rampant voting irregularities and fraud in the election between prime minister Viktor Yanukovich and challenger Viktor A. Yushchenko, protests erupt and culminate in a new election. December * December: First public demonstration by Kifaya (Enough) in Egypt. * December 10: Gary Webb is assassinated. * December 21: Kifaya (Enough) stages public demonstrations in Cairo and 21 provincial cities in Egypt. * December 22: Mexican city of Villahermosa in Tabasco state pases ordinance banning indoor nudity. * December 26: A powerful earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggers a massive tsunami that causes massive destruction is South and Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and East Africa. More than 124,000 are presumed killed, the vast majority on the island of Sumatra inIndonesia, with Sri Lanka, India and Thailand also very hard hit. * December 30: Government of Senegal and the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques di le Casamance (MFDC) sign a peace agreement in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Category:Year